The subject was very much alive and went on its merry way shortly afterwards. No missing segments, just the angle of the shot, I have uploaded 2 more from the same set. The spider was placed on a piece of firewood and moved on to a table outside. Lens was a Canon 100mm macro, manual focus and the settings were 1/250 f8, iso was left to the camera to sort, ranged 800 to 1600 but as it was to be stacked I was not too concerned with grain. I basically focused on the foot nearest to me, centered to the central focusing square on one part and whilst holding the shutter down move as smoothly as possible from front to back keeping the centre focusing square in the same point as much as able. Whole shot took about 3 seconds, redid the same shot about 3 times as sometimes you miss that crucial point and you get soft bands, this was the best of this shot. Managed 3 different angles about 150 shots in total before the spider had had enough.

Hope this helps, need to work more on my retouching though, getting there though.

Excellent pictures!
Nice light and matching colors.
You nailed this difficult challenge of showing the animal in its envorinment.
(even if you moved it a little!)_________________Troels Holm, biologist (retired), environmentalist, amateur photographer.
Visit my Flickr albums

Thank you. Moving it was a must as it had decided to spend the night under the kitchen door (hence the title). For scale, the last shot shows the spider sitting in a groove from a chainsaw cut, about 7mm wide.